Prototypes

Prototypes

Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST)

2010-present Project Leader: Evan Suma

FAAST is middleware to facilitate integration of full-body control with games and VR applications. The toolkit relies upon software from OpenNI and PrimeSense to track the user’s motion using the PrimeSensor or the Microsoft Kinect sensors. FAAST includes a custom VRPN server to stream the user’s skeleton over a network, allowing VR applications to read the skeletal joints as trackers using any VRPN client. Additionally, the toolkit can also emulate keyboard input triggered by body posture and specific gestures. This allows the user add custom body-based control mechanisms to existing off-the-shelf games that do not provide official support for depth sensors.

FAAST is free to use and distribute for research and noncommercial purposes (for commercial uses, please contact us). If you use FAAST to support your research project, we request that any publications resulting from the use of this software include a reference to the toolkit (a tech report will be posted here within the next week or so). Additionally, please send us an email about your project, so we can compile a list of projects that use FAAST. This will be help us pursue funding to maintain the software and add new functionality.

The preliminary version of FAAST is currently available for Windows only. We are currently preparing to release code as an open-source project. Additionally, we plan to develop a Linux port in the near future.

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Work depicted here was sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). Statements and opinions expressed and content included do not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.